Sightline Retail
Shannon Bedore, CEO
How does your company distinguish itself?
There are a lot of individuals who market their knowledge of people and relationships, seemingly as a way to influence which products may launch on retail shelves. While I’m certain there are examples of where this has worked, our company takes a more structured approach to products, brands and retailers. By democratizing the expense structure associated with big-box retailers and their specific requirements — replenishment, warehousing, shipping, forecasting, billing, .com and marketing — we offer a unique competitive advantage, which allows the buyer, supplier and end consumer to all win with a lower-cost model of brand management. Our company knows people because of the unique value proposition we offer and has grown accounts and brands over the last 11 years due to a triangulation in which all parties come out ahead. We combine great merchandising strategy with the excellent implementation processes required to have a successful product on shelf.”
What has been your organization’s proudest moment or accomplishment so far?
We’ve been able to work on national retail strategy for a few brands, which allows us to develop a class of trade strategies for brands who want to have a multichannel approach. This has happened due to our hard work and conviction of offering high service at some of the lowest market rates. Hard work pays off.
What kind of employee culture do you try to cultivate?
We are a small and mighty company, so everyone is empowered to own their business and scope of work and take care of our clients in the best way possible. The great thing about a small company is that everyone contributes and adds value, making the entire team stronger and better each time.
What kind of legacy do you hope this organization will leave behind?
I hope that our experiences in launching and managing brands can be used to educate and create more well-rounded retail leaders in the future. A few of our brands have allowed their data to be used in case studies and research in an academic setting, and my hope is that our work will help create better and brighter retail minds in the next generation of leaders.
What is the most rewarding part of your work?
I love to meet new clients and solve their challenges of launching and managing their brands at retailers. The more clients trust my firm to work on product strategy, the better job we do of excelling. It is still so fun for me to launch products and measure consumer responses. The consumer never ceases to amaze me.
What trends are you watching in your industry right now?
There is a trend among consumers who are buying more at brick-and-mortar retailers yet are shopping fewer times in store. This hybrid experience of “pick up and go/home delivery,” which still utilizes brick-and-mortar store assortments, is counted as e-commerce. However, traditional e-commerce is oftentimes much different fulfillment, fee structure and shopping experience for the consumer. While retailers begin to morph the two channels into a unified experience online, this creates great challenges for supply chain optimization and reframes what a product launch might look like. There are significant challenges today from item set up, fulfillment and fee structure between each model, as one is driven by pallet-driven warehousing strategies and the other by unique, longer-tail, slower-selling products. I don’t know how these two will morph down the road, but I do expect some bumpy roads in trying to optimize both channels into a cost-effective business model for suppliers.
2400 SE C St., Suite 6, Bentonville • 1-844-667-4353 • sightlineretail.com
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